It is already known to engage the leading part of a fabric on a flat knitting machine by take-down hooks, and to pull it by means of these hooks into the area of a take-down roller, which then performs the further taking down of the fabric. An apparatus of this nature is known through German Pat. No. 1,270,730 and the equivalent British Pat. No. 968,001 of the applicants. In this known arrangement the take-down hooks are arranged on a needle bar at the same interval as those on the needle beds and the gaps for the needles. During the formation of the initial path of the knitted fabric, the take-down hooks are raised between the needles and knitted with the yarn. This has the drawback that the take-down hooks must be accurately positioned and so arranged that they can be taken in batches or can be laterally offset. During the production of shaped knitted pieces connected to one another, the take-down needle bar may be so prepared that, in the area in which the successive shaped parts are connected to one another, no take-down hook can be present. Instead the bar is located only in the subsequent free marginal part of a succeeding fresh shaped fabric or shaped article.